El hipérbaton, un punto de relación entre la gramática y la retórica

Abstract

The work I put into consideration is an advance in a research upon word order that involves the study of the hyperbaton.Our analysis stems from the consideration of hyperbaton as a cross or meeting point between grammar and rhetoric, from the conception of recte dicendi, characteristic of grammar, and the one of the bene dicendi, which defines rhetoric. Hyperbaton can be placed in these two lines of the studies of Latin antiquity, with proper and distinctive, though also convergent features, due to the fact that it constitutes a figure registered in the order of words, in a language with a natural word order without major restrictions, and, on the other hand, because the disquisitions about style in which it is framed, the demarcations and constraints from both virtutes and vitia are important; in a last stage, the analysis aims to spot the conception of the hyperbaton in regard to the effects that are expected to be exerted on the audience. In other words, we will try to contribute our own observations about how the theoreticians of the rhetoric —in our particular case, Quintilian and some references to Cicero—,analyzed the hyperbaton, how did they include it, which role was assigned to it, how did they state the relations with the grammar properly said. Such are the questions leading us.Therefore, the course of the present work sets off from the issues related to ordo, both from the grammatical perspective as well as from the conception and definition of the hyperbaton that we specifically trace in Quintilian; the restrictions acting upon and delimitating it, and, lastly, in which point is liable to associate hyperbaton with persuasion.